Rove’s Move Into Republican Primaries Enrages Tea Party

Source: Bloomberg.com

Leaders of the anti-tax Tea Party are fuming about plans by some Republican strategists, including Karl Rove, to tap the party’s wealthy donors and raise money to help “electable” candidates win primary races.

Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for Conservative Victory Project, said in an e-mail yesterday that Republicans lost some Senate races last year and in 2010 because of “undisciplined candidates running bad campaigns.” The new group “seeks to help elect the most conservative candidates in Republican primaries who can win in general elections.”

Leaders of the Tea Party and other Republican groups that oppose abortion and gay rights responded by calling Texas-based political strategist Rove, a founder of the victory project, a “fake conservative” who had “declared war” on the Tea Party.

The victory project also was attacked as “Orwellian” by Matt Kibbe, the head of the Washington-based FreedomWorks, which identifies itself as a “grassroots” Tea Party booster.

During the primary season, Sarah was batting 1000 until Missouri, when her candidate, Sarah Steelman, who was polling the strongest against democrat Claire McCaskill, and was an almost sure winner, lost to Todd Akin after some shenanigans by democrats. Akin almost immediately lost the election by saying incredibly stupid things, allowing one of the very worst of the worst to be re-elected.

Lesson?

Always listen to Sarah Palin. Chances are you’ll have better results. A couple of other candidates lost their primaries, but for the most part, if Sarah Palin endorsed you in the primary, you won.

That brings us to the general election. Sarah outperformed the Republican Party by a bunch. Out of the eight candidates she endorsed, six of them won:

Conclusion: If they are listening to Rove about who is electable, they are probably listening to the wrong guy. The Tea Party (the monster Dick Armey created) might very well be able to outperform mainstream Republicans in many areas of the country if it breaks free and becomes its own party.